August 1, 2011

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU HAVEN'T POSTED IN A MONTH?!?!

You guys, I know, I know. I totally disappeared, and honestly? There's not really a particularly trenchant reason for it. Just - summer stuff. Lots of playing outside with water, which doesn't always mix with camera equipment in a relaxing way. But I have definitely been missing this space... so yeah, let's get on that, shall we, little miss forty-two roads?

Oh, that face up top? That's Jakey's "Angry Bad Guy" face. Usually made while loudly declaiming, "Ang'y! Bad! Guy!" and punching any nearby surface for emphasis. (Partial disclosure - sometimes that surface is a parent. Full disclosure - we should probably sternly say "no hitting" or something in response, but we usually just laugh at the hilarity. Mixed signals, shmixed shmignals.) Incidentally, the favorite bad guy of the moment is the little apoplectic chef from "Ratatouille", which Jakey calls "the bad guy movie".

On another front, project "BFF siblings" is progressing nicely. Is it odd to be trying to socially engineer this rather than just letting nature take whatever course it will? Well, maybe it's because I'm an only child, so my approach to this is necessarily from an outsider perspective, but my sense is that fake-it-till-you-make-it works for all sorts of situations in life. So if, say, sharing with your sibling isn't your strong suit, mommy institutes mandatory sharing of treats. Sure, there'll eventually be two cookies for two kids, but you'll get them one at a time and will have to break each in half and give half away. Or, for example, if you constantly demand that only mommy fetch you things on long car trips, you will instead ask your sibling for them nicely or not get to play with them at all. So far, a little bit of this kind of armchair psychological trickery seems to really have created a baseline of cooperative, affectionate, concerned, and helpful behavior... but of course all baselines are made to be overstepped.

So, how's your summer been going? Any social programming going on at your house?